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conscience

What does sleepy conscience mean in Mark Twain’s quote, “Good friends, good books, a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life”?

According to Mark Twain, his definition of an ideal or perfect life, is the company of good friends, read good books and not be too overly bothered by our conscience (our inner sense of what is right or wrong).

As you know our conscience is inevitably pestering us all the time. Mark Twain used the term “sleepy conscience“, he meant try to dull or pay less attention to our conscience.

In other words, don’t let our conscience keep us up at night, so to speak.

So if we want to live a more pleasant or less stressed-out life, we got to just let go and not be burdened by our ever-present conscience.